Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Summer and smoke

In August 1861, not long after the Civil War began, an acting volunteer lieutenant, 45 years old, was ordered to report to the New York Navy Yard. In December, Lt. John W. Kittredge - a small native New Yorker with a sallow complexion - was given command of the bark Arthur, a three-masted warship fitted out for blockade duty in the Gulf of Mexico.
   Kittredge sailed the Arthur to Ship Island, off Biloxi, Miss., which was blockade headquarters in the Gulf for the Union fleet. He then sailed the Arthur to its assigned station off the Texas coast.
   Texas ports had been so lightly blockaded that blockade runners could operate at will out of Corpus Christi, Indianola and other ports. This would change.
   Panic on the coast
   For the next few months, Kittredge caused havoc along the Texas coast. He captured blockade runners and sent raiding parties ashore, to pillage, plunder and burn. Frightened island residents moved inland. The year 1862, especially that summer, was a time of panic in towns and settlements on Corpus Christi and Aransas bays.
   In the early morning of Jan. 25, 1862, the schooner J.J. McNeil, a blockade-runner, stood in for Pass Cavallo and Indianola. It was loaded with a valuable cargo of coffee and tobacco from Vera Cruz. After unloading, it was supposed to return to Mexico with sugar and cotton.
   But the unlucky McNeil ran into the Arthur and was captured. Kittredge took the ship's owner, Judge Martin Talbert, as a prisoner and sent the McNeil with a prize crew to Ship Island. (Captured ships and cargoes were sold and the crew split the prize money.)
   The next month, in February, Kittredge captured a sloop, the Bellefont, inside the bar at Aransas. He landed marines at several places on the coast, including Mustang Island, where they burned the Chubb and Mercer homes of the island's bar pilots. They burned the wharf at Aransas, across the pass on St. Joseph's, and played cat and mouse with Confederates at Fort Esperanza on Matagorda.
   In April, Kittredge took launches for a cutting out expedition on Aransas Bay. (The bays were too shallow for the Arthur, which drew 14 feet.) Kittredge's men attacked three ships off Shellbank Island and captured two, which they were forced to leave behind when Confederate reinforcements arrived from Fort Esperanza.
   Almost captured
   But Kittredge and his men were almost captured when he mistook Blind Bayou on St. Joseph's for a pass to the Gulf. When they came to the end of the bayou, they scrambled out of the launches, ran across the island to the Gulf side, and signalled the Arthur. A cutter was sent to rescue the party just as the chasing Confederates arrived.
   This close call must have scared Kittredge for he stayed inactive for two months, keeping to the boring duty of tacking back and forth on blockade duty - boxing the compass - off Aransas pass. There were no raiding forays ashore.
   But Kittredge resumed the offensive in the summer. A coastal survey ship, the Sachem, was converted into a gunboat and added to his fleet, along with a yacht captured on Lake Ponchartrain, the Corypheus. On July 9, Kittredge captured the schooner Reindeer, loaded with 45 bales of cotton, and the next day he captured the sloop Belle Italia and burned the sloop Monte Christo; the Belle Italia was loaded with corn and bacon and the Monte Christo was carrying medical supplies bound for Corpus Christi.
   Kittredge now had the light-draft ships he needed to penetrate the bays. His target was Corpus Christi, which was lightly defended and had been a center for blockade runners.
   Besides the Arthur, Kittredge's fleet included former blockade vessels Reindeer, Belle Italia, the steam-powered gunboat Sachem, and the fast sailing tender Corpheus. Except for the Arthur, the other four ships could easily operate on Corpus Christi Bay.
   The shooting war was about to hit the small, fearful village of Corpus Christi.
   This is the first of two columns. The second part can be found here.
  

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